Book Review - Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland's writing is a little Chuck Palahniuk, without trying as hard to be clever, and a little Kurt Vonnegut, though not so cynical. This book is not his first novel, but it almost reads like one. It doesn't make me interested to read his other books anytime soon, which is a bummer because I had high hopes for this book.

The story is about the foreseeable future when bees have gone extinct. No one has seen them for at least five years. Suddenly 5 different and seemingly unrelated people get stung. The book is told from their individual perspectives. Coupland does a good job of giving them all different personalities, though the writing style for each voice is basically identical. I found myself having trouble believing that the perceptive introvert was perceptive at all in certain chapters. At times he told his story like an ignorant fool.

I had bigger problem with the pacing. The story was all beginning and end, with no middle to speak of. We start out with the 5 people getting stung and they are whisked away to underground labs to be studied for a month, without explanation as to why. Then they go home, but before anything can happen there, they are whisked away yet again to a remote island where they find out why they were stung and what the results of being locked away underground were. Why even have them go home at all? Coupland seemed to be in a rush, but nothing gets me into a book like a writer who savors the story.

But I don't want to be misleading, it's a fun book and Coupland has a smart writing style. It was an easy read and an enjoyable one. It simply wasn't my favorite and I won't be rushing to re-read this book. I still stand by it being an interesting story idea, I just wish there could have been more to it. In a way that's a compliment. It's not like I didn't finish the book; I liked it enough to want more from it.

Rice Flour Pancakes

I realized when I was posting yesterday that I have never actually put up my recipe for Rice Flour Pancakes. The link I had there was the inspiration for what I make, but not the way I actually make them. So here it is:

Amazing, tasty, who-even-cares-about-wheat-flour-anymore, gluten-free, banana pancakes

1 c rice flour (I use brown, it has a fuller flavor)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1-2 T sugar (if you have maple syrup that's even tastier. I use raw sugar because refined sugar is... gross.)
1 t vanilla(or almond) extract
1 T veg oil
3/4 c alternative milk of choice (obviously you should not DEFILE my recipes with cow milk)
1 medium overripe banana

Mix all the dry ingredients. Mash the banana really well in a separate bowl, you want it to be about the consistency of beaten eggs. Then add in the milk, vanilla and oil. Add wet to dry. Stir well. A banana is an inexact measurement, so you may need to add more milk or flour. Make sure your cooking surface is adequately greased, because these puppies will stick like crazy and then crumble apart, though if this does happen, don't fret they still taste just as good. Cook as you would any other inferior pancake, dropping about 1/3 c at a time.

I put a little lemon oil into The Logger's pancakes yesterday morning and he LOVED them. I also once made these with a bit of jam swirled into the batter, which was amazing. Basically, it's a flexible recipe and a yummy one.

A mid-winter check in

I recently posted about the mid-winter warmth we've been having in Vermont. All over town and even in my backyard I can see actually grass. Real grass. Not covered in snow. Or at least I could until two days ago. It was as though the sky finally looked at the ground and realized it was looking a little too much like spring and promptly dumped a few inches of snow on us. I really enjoyed the use of the word squall that happened on several occasions at work. At one point we looked outside and saw nothing but white. NOTHING BUT WHITE. OK, OK, I know this is Vermont, but it's not the arctic, this kind of stuff doesn't happen very often.

And now is as good a time as any to check in with those changes I told myself I'd be making in my life.

1. Step up my commitment to the environment. I'm doing a pretty good job of this. I've made a few changes recently that are small, but significant. One of those changes does not include driving less. It's endlessly annoying that I have two jobs and usually work at to locations everyday. This kind of kills any chance of carpooling, because I would need to orchestrate something between three different people who don't share my schedule. However, come spring I plan to bike more. Right now it's not feasible. Not because of the cold, but due to the danger of ice and snow banks in what would be the shoulder of a highway. No thanks.

But here's something fun! I'm going to try and include a fun environmental... something (who knows) at the bottom of my non-book review posts. Starting today.

2. Become a for real Vermont resident. I am officially a Vermont voter! And I have a PO Box! And I applied for health insurance. I don't have a Vermont ID yet, but that's because I don't have time to even think about driving to Bennington for such a trivial thing.

3. Get even more organized. Yeah... about that. I haven't done this.

4. Check!

5. Read more. There isn't enough time to read all of the books on my book list!!! But I'm trying.

6. Make new friends. Um. Well. I think I'm kind of trying. I mean, I've gone out to social events I would normally skip out on, but I also go to the movies alone every week and never even try to have company. Socializing is so much work! I just want to have friends without having to go through the stress of making them. (yes, I said stress. This might explain why change is so difficult for me)

7. Continue my efforts to eat whole, home-made, unprocessed food. I haven't had a single Soy Chai Latte since I wrote that change! I have had several bagels though. Clearly I need to go out and get me some rice cakes, because I'm all out and I'm substituting bagels. Still no blender. Gonna go make a new freecycle post about this.

So... yeah! I'd say I'm chugging along. But I'm gonna go chug along down to the kitchen and make me some rice flour pancakes.

A green idea: I get paid weekly at my internet job. Gordon leaves our paychecks in an envelope by our time sheets. There are 52 weeks in a year. That's 52 envelopes a year! I buy a box of 50 envelopes and it lasts me forever. I don't want my paychecks costing the earth a box of paper envelopes a year. So on Fridays I put my packcheck into my backpack and hand the envelope back to Gordon. He reuses it next week. My little envelope change inspired one of my coworkers as well, so that's a little over two boxes of envelopes a year we're saving for pretty much no effort whatsoever. Woo!

Lemon Amazing!

One of the perks of working at a bookstore is that I can borrow books. If I'm really interested in reading a book, but I don't really want to commit to buying it, I can simply allocate a copy to myself and take it home for a few days. Of course I need to be insanely careful with it and not spill anything on it, or accidentally bend the cover. I NEVER dog ear pages, so that's no problem.

Getting to the point: Monday is The Loggers birthday. And if you are a devoted blog reader (AKA my mother), you'll remember the ridiculous lemon cake I made him last year. This year he said he wanted to be a little more low key and that he wanted cupcakes. Lemon cupcakes. There's been a major change in our lives since last year's cake, and that is veganism. The Logger isn't actually vegan (though he gets closer and closer every day), but since I am, and I do most of the cooking and all of the baking, that means vegan baked goods for birthdays.

I knew I would need to get the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but I didn't want to buy a copy. I was just going to email a recipe to myself while I was at work, but I completely forgot until about 5 seconds before we were shutting down the computers. Shit. So I quickly allocated a copy to myself. It was the last copy. So I'm sorry bookstore, I know I'm not supposed to take books home when there isn't another copy in the store, but I think I'm pretty much 100% of the Manchester vegan market, so I'm not too worried anyone is going to run into the store and demand a copy of the vegan cupcake book. Anyway there's a copy of the vegan cookie book, so whatever.

In order to be as careful as possible (and because I generally make a mess when baking) I copied the recipe onto another piece of paper before attempting to make anything. I transformed the basic vanilla cupcake into a lemon delight. The Logger loved them, and so did I, though I don't especially love lemons. Win.

Maybe I do need a vegan cupcake book after all...

Bees!!! and a canker sore

I have this stupid canker sore. Not as bad as the one I had at the end of last winter though. At least I can eat and talk and be alive without thinking about this one. It really only annoys me when I brush my teeth. I feel like I'm making it worse. I'm not though. These things are all the same; they show up suddenly, stick around without changing for whatever period of time they seem fit, and they they disappear just as quickly as they came. They don't get worse or better, they are either there, or gone. This one is not gone. Maybe a few more days.

Whatever, that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the weather I think. There's a January thaw happening right now and it feels nice. The weather has been above freezing for most of the day and then everything gets icy again at night. The news man on the radio said that bees need a warm day or two every month to leave their hives and take a dump. I feel like my brain might need sunny days like that as well to take a spiritual dump. Whatever that means. I clearly need more sun.

I'm reading a book called Generation A (yeah, I put the plant book on hold and didn't update my website. Oh hush, you don't even care). It's all about the not-distant future where bees are extinct. No bees. None of those pollinators we've come to rely so heavily on. An exotic species in this country, but so are most of the crops we grow, so it makes sense. We've changed our eco system and it's working out. Except bees really aren't doing so well, so this book isn't so unbelievable. It's fiction by the way, not some kind of apocalyptic sustainability book.

Anyway this brings me to my next point: honey. I know, I know, honey is not vegan. I got it. But put the whining on hold for a second and let me point out my thoughts on my own personal honey consumption. I eat honey. I eat it rather frequently. I realize the issues with large-scale commercial honey farms (if you don't, then you might want to check this out). I agree with honey being an animal product that is collected in ways which I would consider cruel. I won't buy silk because I think silk production is cruel, so why include honey in my diet?

The reasons, which I have thought very hard about, are simple. I have terrible allergies in the spring. I can not function as a normal human being without medication. Medication is tested on animals in the cruelest ways possible. However! eating local honey in the winter can help your body become immune to pollen in the spring. It's like a delicious and sweet allergy shot to go with my morning oatmeal. If eating some honey in the winter, which I get from a beekeeping friend (who does not kill his bees, or clip their wings, or burn their hives) will mean that I won't need to purchase allergy medication, then I'm going to eat honey. I'm not buying honey from anyone else. I don't buy pre-packaged food which might contain honey and I pretty much cook all of my meals, so the honey thing doesn't come up often in my life. It would be awesome if, in a few seasons, I didn't need allergy medication or immune system building honey, but right now I'm certainly choosing the lesser of two evils.

I realize I'm probably going get a huge lecture on this at some point. The honey debate is a huge one in vegan communities and I would say that I agree with the non-honey eating vegans. I do agree with them. I also think that bees are important pollinators and if they do disappear (which they have been doing, though we don't really know why), we are pretty much fucked. So if my local friend (who worships his bees by the way), can raise a happy, healthy colony, then more power to him. He's an incredibly irresponsible guy and his hives will probably end up swarming and creating wild hives anyway.

Bzz

Book Review - Vegan Freak by Bob and Jenna Torres

This book is a must have for any vegans, vegetarians, or people somewhere in between. It's kind of a how-to guide to surviving in a very non-vegan world, where you will probably be looked at as a freak.

It deals with the obvious question of "why vegan?" and also the less obvious question of "why vegan and NOT vegetarian?" It also deals with the parts of veganism that involve non-food items. I especially like the chapters about how to handle non-vegans, specifically family and friends.

I really identify with and needed something like this book. It explains the importance of having vegans friends and a vegan community. I live in a small town and I'm lucky to know even one other vegan. I spend a lot of time reading vegan blogs and I communicate with my vegan friends in NY whenever I feel like I need a vegan ally. Part of the reason I have this blog is for and outlet for my life and my veganism is part of that. It's frustrating to feel like you're the only person around who sees the very serious cruelty involved in the non-vegan ways of the people around us, especially the people we love.

The only major criticism I have about this book is the editing. In this case, it seems like the major part of the editing process was done by a spell checker and not much more. I found so many major grammatical errors in this book it drove me mad. Simply sending the book to anyone else and having them read it cover to cover would have solved so many of the editing issues. Oh my god I have never read a book with so many typos. Even my college papers had less problems than this book. Bob and Jenna, if you're reading this, I adore you guys, but please fix this stuff before the next printing. (For all you people out there who would argue that my own blog is full of errors, I'll remind you that I openly admit to not proofreading mot of this, it's not a published book, and I make absolutely no money from it. It's a hobby, not a job and is in no way professional.)

I don't want to make the book sound amateur, it's not. It's so clear that a lot of thought and research went into it. They include many other books to refer to for more information and help on any of the many topics they touch on in the book. It's a starting point, and an important one. So, if you're vegan, or thinking about it: go buy this book! Or borrow it, whatever.

No 'poo

After reading Sleeping Naked Is Green, I felt inspired to start making my own small changes. I already do a lot of what was talked about in the book, but something I had been curious about and even managed some failed attempts at, was giving up shampoo. In truth, I don't think the author ever really did it, but I wanted to.

For as long as I can remember I've always had dandruff and buildup. Actually, I've had dandruff caused by buildup. No matter what shampoo I used or what kind of water I washed it with, I always had buildup. And my hair is super-italian-greasy and heavy. It gets pretty gross after a few days of not washing.

I figured I'd give this no shampoo thing a try, so I read up about it on the internet first. Turns out it's not just as simple as, stop washing your hair. Your hair gets stripped of it's natural oils when you use shampoo, so it over-compensates and starts producing massive amounts of oil to recuperate. When you initially stop using shampoo your hair will be extra-ultra greasy. It takes a while for your hair to balance out and stop over-producing oil.

I avoided this period pretty easily (or at least shortened it drastically) by only shampooing once a week for a long time. My hair was at least half way to balanced. I also mixed up a solution of 1 tablespoon baking soda and one cup of water. I keep it in an old Dr. Bronner's bottle in the shower. I massage it into my scalp when I "wash" my hair. The baking soda helps to break up excess dirt and grease in your hair. Another thing I did to help with the transition was to use shampoo only on the bottom part of my hair, where it didn't touch my head.

Baking soda will feel strange at first, mostly because it feels like almost nothing. It won't lather, it won't smell fruity, and it won't make your hair slippery and silky int he shower. Actually my hair feels kind of weird and stiff when it's still wet after I've scrubbed with baking soda. However, once it's dry it feels AMAZING. It's so light and soft. It's almost annoying how much lighter it is (in terms of weight), because before all of the grease was keeping my hair weighed down and out of my face, now it just kind of flows and moves easily, it falls in my face a lot more.

I also don't have gross buildup and my dandruff has gotten much much better. Better than it was when I was using shampoos made especially for dandruff. I still have a little bit of it and my scalp stills gets a bit itchy. I think that has to do with genetics (thanks dad for the oily hair and dry scalp you passed on to your only daughter) and a little do to with the baking soda itself.

One thing I read online is that the baking soda can cause a little irritation or dandruff because it is so basic. If that happens you can rinse with a solution of 1 tablespoon vinegar and a cup of water to neutralize the base. I used to use vinegar to wash my hair when I was swimming a lot. Yes, it smells bad in the shower (use apple cider vinegar for less of a smell), but it will not leave your hair smelling like vinegar. The smell is gone as soon as the vinegar dries.

As soon as the Logger finishes his current bottle of Dr. Bronners, I'm going to mix up a batch of vinegar solution and let you know how that goes. Yay for no more 'poo!